Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @01:25PM
from the i'd-read-the-article-but-I-gotta-read-my-email-first dept.

Rollie Hawk writes "Are you addicted to email? According to the Opinion Research Corporation, the odds are pretty good that you are.
Their study of 4,012 adults in the twenty largest U.S. cities found that 41% of respondents start the day by checking their email. On the average, respondents admitted to checking their email five times a day.
Respondents also mentioned email features they wish were available. Examples included the ability to retract unread messages (45%) and a way to track the forwarding of their own email (43%).
Just how addicted are the email-dependent among us? So heavily that one quarter of respondents won't go more than two or three days without it. Of course, by those standards, most Americans must be addicted to work, sex, and TV as well."

The 12 step program is pseudo science at best. Ultimately if the individual either faces enough social pressure (e.g. court sentence) or has the strength of will to go through the 12 step process, they could quit a habit of their own.

Your example prooves it... insert "sex", "drugs", "e-mail", "eating", whatever you wish; most likely the 'method' is adaptable. Of course if the process is so generic as to be applicable to anything, its most likely a truism and actually has little inherent value.

Hmm, strange to remember that some people actually have to check their email. All my accounts notify me. If it takes the average person 1 minutes to check their email, then you could say I check mine 960 times a day.

control is essentially it. You can generally control a routine, where as an addiction is more or less outside of your control (smoking, drugs, even sex addicts cant go for more then a couple of days without engaging in their vice of choice).

There are other differing attributes and examples, but in a nutshell, thats the gist of it.

Should be, you would think. And it usually starts out as something you enjoy. But often, once the addiction takes hold it's less "something you enjoy" and more "something you require to function normally." You may or may not still enjoy it, but you do NOT enjoy being without it.

an addiction is something you do because you NEED to. a routine is something you do becuase its a habit and it needs to get done.

If you have 6 email addresses and you check them as soon as you wake up, as soon as you get to work, several times during the day at work, as soon as you get home, after dinner, just before going to bed, and at random times in between, then it might be considered an addiction

Well since this is Slashdot, I obviously didn't RTFA, but if the summary is accurate, this study is moronic.

I check my email regularly because I get email regularly. I occasionally forget to open Thunderbird in the morning (I leave it open and watch the notifications) and then I miss a bunch of important emails and wonder what's going on.

I don't doubt that some people are addicted to email. But it sounds to me like the indicators the study used are ridiculous. As you say, checking your email in the mornin

Yeah, I did wonder, and scanned down the post looking for what physical traits "e-mail" might have that would either encourage an addiction (clicks like an addicted mouse on a wheel?) or break as a result of an addiction (smoking servers?). Both a total reach, I know. And nothin', nada.

Take a look at the editor who put this up, though. Whatever the original poster chose on the way in, it's the editor who needs to figure out how things fit together. Taco, Taco, Taco.

E-mail is not the addiction. What people want and need is the social interaction. Different people use different means and technologies to get it, but the basics are the same.

Like this article is trying to make an issue out of a particular technology that is used. It's no worse than the old ladies that just have to go down to the beauty salon every day. They go for the chit-chat. The salon is just the place where it all happens.

E-Mail, forums, Blogs, Cell Phones, Text. They are all just communications mediums. Make fun of each others technology, but know that the underlying need of each is to stay in touch and communicate.

I also check my voicemail every day when I get home from work, and at any other time that I think I may have a phone call.

I also check my physical mail box every day, just to see how much less money I'm going to have after I do bills.

I look in the fridge for something to eat at least 5-8 times a day.

I pee at least twice, often times around 3 times a day.

Until these people start going into withdrawal when they stop checking their email, don't call it addiction. I've gone weeks without checking my email, after having checked it about 8 times + a day for the year or two preceding that. I didn't even give it a second thought.

The real headline is that "The Opinion Research Corporation is staffed by a pack of retarded monkeys. The CEO expressed optimism that their next release will be more along the lines of Hamlet than a total pile of bullshit. High School students everywhere were known to ask 'What's the difference?'".

Well... Call me pathetic, but after waiting 2 weeks for the net when I moved into my last house, I was exhibiting a little bit of withdrawal. Plus I think the only thing that stops me from checking my e-mail on the hour is the wondrous invention of e-mail notifiers.

This is way off the subject, but this is the third time today I've either read somebody or heard somebody say something like this:...check my physical mail box every day, just to see how much less money I'm going to have after I do bills...

What I want to know is: How can you not know already? Why are people afraid to check the mail, or hate when bills arrive? Don't you all already know how much money you spent, and when payment is due?

Since when has doing something a lot that needs doing a lot to be useful meant you're addicted? If you don't check your email frequently you might as well use snail mail - one of the biggest benefits of email over snail mail is speed.

How many people would be checking their email five times a day if we had something (in our house for example) that notified us (by, oh, say a ringing sound) when we had a new message? Or maybe a blinking light? Sound familiar?

People only check their email that often because they don't have any other way of knowing whether or not they've got new mail. Tie email notification in with a distinct telephone ring sound, and you'll see the # of times people check their email drop considerably. Crack down on spamme

Addiction is a very specific term that has, like much else, been co-opted by people who want it to mean something else. From a psychological or physiological standpoint it means that, if you don't get the substance, you feel withdrawal symptoms, and you need increasing doses of the substance in order to keep the withdrawal symptoms away.

So, technically, most people are not addicted. They just really like email, and find it useful. However, from the way most people understand addiction, well, I suppose they

Email has become such a ubiquitous means of communication, I'm not sure the its frequent use can be termed an "addiction". Would we say that someone is addicted to the phone because they either call or answer it 5 times a day? I'd posit that it's used a lot simply because it's an effective way to communicate.

Since I have customers (and coworkers) all over the globe, sometimes working radically different hours than I do, I've found that it's often better to toss an e-mail to some people than to attempt to contact them by other means.

We also get a lot of announcements, problem reports, status messages, and other things sent via e-mail at my current workplace.

Because of this, by e-mail client checks for new mail every five minutes. And depending on the type of message, sometimes that's too long a period of time

If you use webmail, checking involves a good bit of effort and attention on your part. But if you use a normal client, you have it running in the background checking on your behalf periodically and notifying you when mail arrives. Does the fact that my computer checks mail several hundred times a day make me an addict, or does it mean that whoever designed this survey thinks that "everyone uses webmail these days"?

I do computer consulting for a living and the one thing I've come to detest is email. The sound of the word even sets my teeth on edge. It's the first thing customers ask about when I get their computers back to them.

This is bad. What is becoming of the American citizenry? It is already sad to see the Vehicular addicts each morning, and now this? Yes, Vehicular Addicts. Those people who must satiate their addiction to vehicles by driving one each day. The worst of them actually 'shoot up' by driving first thing each morning, sometimes even before coffee (double addiction jeapordy there my friends!)! It is sad to see people being enslaved by their cars, and now even by email. What a sad sad people we have become.

Saying people are "addicted" to email because they check it 3-5 times a day is like saying people are "addicted" to the phone because they choose to answer it every time it rings. Or for that matter, checking your snail-mail box once a day (you ADDICT!). Oh, I check my wristwatch a few times a day to see what time it is - does this make me a TIME addict?

While at work, outlook never closes and I have notifications on my screen every time a new email comes in which is pretty often. It's a part of my job. When I leave my desk my blackberry comes with me so I can see any email that I'm missing while I'm not there... but am I addicted? I'd say no. I just do my job. When 5:00 rolls around I check my home email sometime after dinner and don't really touch the computer after that. I think those of us that are forced to do it as part of our daily routine in

the ability to retract unread messages (45%) and a way to track the forwarding of their own email (43%)

If that's really the case then it sounds like Microsoft will have its work cut out for them in selling DRM to these people, since that's the only reliable way a control-freak can track & control "his" email once it's on someone elses machine.

The only way for the account to be removed was if it was inactive for three months.

I tried many times to just stop logging in and checking my mail, but i always caved in and looked "just in case someone had sent something important".

I was on track to never being able to deactivate that account.

The maximum number of characters in the password was 20 characters.

What I ended up doing was typing in 20 random characters, without looking, in notepad, then changed my password to that using copy/paste so I effectively locked myself out of the account. I needed the copy/paste so I could type in the new password twice.

When my email arrives, I automatically receive an audible notification on my cellphone and can check the message right from the phone. So it's essentially beeing fed to me 'intravenously' so to speak. Does that make an addict of me?

In fact, in a recent study conducted by Nugneant Industries, over 100% of Americans witnessed the sight of a motorcar! When asked if they could possibly live life for three days without looking at a motorcar, they were most likely to answer "no", or offer a sarcastic wisecrack in its stead! America is addicted to the sight of wheeled machinery!

Most Americans ANSWER THEIR TELEPHONE WHEN IT RINGS!!! I don't believe I need to expungate on the addictive dangers therein!

I think the conclusion is quite obvious - we're a people addicted to communication and transport! Hopefully a nice, well meaning New Age Liberal surgeon general will issue a proclomation about these events in the future! If only that open minded and charismatic Ronald Reagan was still in office - I'm sure he could convince those bad guys in blue to stop his part in the daily addiction of postal mail.

WTF are you supposed to do?
Boss: "Did you get that email about the Johnson account?"
You: "No."
Boss: "Is there a problem with email today? I sent it this morning!"
You: "I dunno. I'm not checking email today. I feel I'm becoming addicted to email. So, I'm weaning myself off this dependence slowly."
Boss: "Why don't you run down to HR and they can help you wean yourself completely. As it turns out, we have a program that helps with this sort of thing. It's sort of a tough-love approach."

...the ability to retract unread messages (45%) and a way to track the forwarding of their own email (43%)

Novell Groupwise can do at least the first one. I don't know about the second one. I used to work in a corporate environment that used GroupWise for email, calendaring, and document sharing. You could monitor to see who had opened and read messages you sent out. Handy feature, that.

Here's a related anecdote: My brother's wife worked as a secretary downstairs in the office building, and we used t

What differentiates an addiction from an adaptation? When can an adaptation be said to have become an addiction? Playing with these ideas is a fun portal to understanding our makeup, but, at least for me, the answers aren't obvious. We function to a large degree by systems of negative feedback, with a few benign positive feedback loops, for example a sexual orgasim is the result of positive feedback, which for many can be said to be an addiction, there's evidence that less sexually active people live longer

They're addicted because they check E-mail 5 times a day? Oh my God! I eat food 5 times a day some times too! I must be addicted to food! And I read more than that! I'm addicted to reading! Not to mention I talk, answer the phone, breathe, move... oh my God! I'm addicted to everything!

Their study of 4,012 adults in the twenty largest U.S. cities found that 41% of respondents start the day by checking their email. On the average, respondents admitted to checking their email five times a day.

I bet a survey in 1970 would show that well over 60% of people would have said that they started the day by reading the newspaper. Were they addicted to newspapers?

If there's an "addiction" here, it's an addiction to calling things addictions, when they aren't. This is one of those rare instances when I have to agree with the right wing- "personal responsibility" just isn't fashionable anymore. It's not my fault that I'm out of shape: I'm addicted to TV, so it's the TV's fault. It's not my fault I'm fat, I'm addicted to food. And it's not my fault I never get any work done, I'm an email junkie (complete with track marks up and down my arms where I tried to plug in the ethernet cable). Etcetera.

Nope. My standard email client checks for new mail once a minute, and it is open on my desktop from when I log in until when I log out to go home. My personal account (offsite) biffs me when mail shows up there.

There's too many times my boss has come across the hall to say "I just mailed you" something I need to work on, and it is better for me to be able to say "read my reply" than "what mail?"

I probably check my e-mail (manually) 20 times a day...on a slow day. A lot of what I am checking for is things like responses to my posts on Slashdot (and many others.) I also sell photographs, and people send inquries via e-mail...I want to jump on those ASAP- because typically they will buy from the first person who responds.

That doesn't count my work e-mail, which runs a check every 5 minutes, and notifies me when I get an e-mail. I check that one manually a lot, becaus

Ever get that feeling of irrational rage or anger or just plain frustration when someone else uses your laptop. Heh...I've been there...my fiancee asks to use my laptop al the time so she can surf the web while we're watching TV.My first, knee-jerk reaction is to say, "Hell no, you can't use my laptop! What the hell is the matter with you???".Then I remember where I am, and say "Sure, honey."Then I shut down the laptop and boot up Puppy for her (I don't care if she's my fiancee, she's NOT gonna log onto